I don’t post a lot of lists of don’ts on my blog. I don’t think I’ve ever posted a list just of what not to do (please correct me if you remember one), though suppose I’ve probably tempered some tips posts with advice on what not to do.

Christoph Trappe, linked from Twitter avatar

I certainly could compile a list of journalism or social-media practices I don’t recommend, but I often think that someone smarter than me — or perhaps someone with different goals — could use those practices successfully. They may use the practice in a way that I couldn’t foresee or in a unique situation that turns the potential annoyance some people feel from that practice around, giving it appeal (or using the annoyance in a creative, positive way).

Christoph Trappe, a friend from Iowa, probably falls into both of the categories above — someone smarter than me, with different goals. I highly recommend his Authentic Storytelling Project and think it could benefit people in various fields of communication.

In a tweet last night, Christoph referenced a post from October about his Twitter pet peeves.*

I couldn’t exactly see what prompted his calling attention to an old blog post, but I’ve done it before (today, in fact), so I read with interest a post that slipped past me the first time.

I commend the post to your attention without endorsing all his peeves. I share Christoph’s annoyance at most of the practices he listed. For instance, I, too, am peeved when people send automated direct messages thanking me for following them (I welcome personal messages, though) or post only teasers and links. (more…)

Friedman’s piece gave reasons why a journalist might want to use Twitter as well as some why you wouldn’t. She’s enthusiastic about Twitter and I applaud her contribution to this discussion. But I’m going to pick at that one word, because others have used that 19 percent figure as a reason to dismiss Twitter. On Twitter and in a comment on Friedman’s post, people zeroed in on that number as a supposed sign that Twitter isn’t important (Ivan is channeling others here, not expressing disdain):

Q2. But but but … why Twitter and not other tools if only 19% are on it? What is it that makes it better, if at all? #dfmchat

The point is: Internet use is huge and 19 percent of its users are a lot of people. Google, Amazon and Facebook have bigger audiences, I presume, maybe a few more. But there aren’t many bigger digital audiences than Twitter’s.

And, as I’ve said many times before, Twitter is an excellent tool for finding sources on breaking news, liveblogging and many other journalism uses that have nothing to do with the potential size of your audience.

Don’t use 19 percent as a measure of how small Twitter is. It’s a measure of how big Twitter is.

Update: I remembered this after initially posting. I made a similar argument here a couple years ago, when the numbers were smaller.

For much of my first five or six years on Twitter, I tried to convince other journalists of its value. I’d assure them that you didn’t have to tweet about what you had for breakfast and that it really helps you find sources, report stories, etc. I’ve pretty much stopped doing that.

If you’re a journalist not using Twitter in 2014, you’ve chosen to be less skilled, less relevant, less visible and less connected. That’s your choice and I no longer care much about changing your mind. I can think of a few times in the last month that I’ve encountered journalists who were defiantly resisting use of Twitter and I just smiled, if I acknowledged their defiance at all.

But here’s one last try: You might get fired at any time. Every journalist knows that, especially these days. When you get fired, Twitter is an incredible source of encouragement and even job leads.

I had support from friends, family and colleagues in 1992, but it was one of the worst days of my career. Wednesday was another difficult day. But it was still one of the best days of my career. I will always remember it fondly for the warm embrace of friends, especially on Twitter. (more…)

About halfway into my #twutorial series, I realized I needed a better table of contents.

The point of the series is to help journalists use Twitter effectively to do better journalism, and how I steered people from one post to others was with a growing list of previous posts at the end of each post, mostly in reverse chronological order. For a while, I’ve been meaning to organize the links by topic, to be more helpful for journalists seeking help with using Twitter.

Thanks to Suzi Steffen for giving me the nudge in this recent exchange of tweets:

@kmarrone1 oh … SO MUCH ADVICE but 1st thing is go to @stevebuttry‘s WP blog & read all of the entries tagged w/Twitter.

So here’s an index to my #twutorial posts, organized by topics (with some appearing more than once if I think they would fit multiple places; the one on search will show up several places). I’ll update periodically with posts from other journalists that I think are similarly helpful as well as with my own posts. I am the author of all posts listed here, unless I mention another author.